Painful Vestige
by ActuallyRedEyes
Summary: The Pharaoh's scars are buried deep, hidden from prying eyes. But when the Spirit of the Ring placed his Fragment into the Millennium Puzzle, he uncovered a secret better left forgotten, and a madness lingering in the dark. Mindscape. Request-fic.


_This was originally two short one-shots I combined into one. Request-fic._

 _Somehow its all too plausible to me that Atem could have unintentionally fractured his personality sometime before the early manga timeline._

* * *

The Millennium Puzzle lived up to its name in more ways than one.

As if the act of assembling its pieces together wasn't enough to dissuade the average would-be thief or ego maniac, compounded onto that was the interior structure built to confuse and throw wanderers into disarray. In layman's terms, a maze.  
But, on the more complex level, a barricade, composed of interwoven structures of false ends and dead starts littered with enough traps to put an end to any unwanted visitor.

The Fragment, placed there as an extension of his consciousness by the spirit of the Ring, was too cautious and experienced to fall prey to such tricks however. Though he was amused at times to find the atmosphere changing in the most unpredictable ways occasionally, such as opening a door to find the interior suddenly cold as ice, or the gravity flipping on a dime. Any other unwelcome intruder would have met a grisly fate, and it would be their fate for attempting such a feat. He surmounted them all, and avoided the rest with relative ease. This was just a warm-up for the Pharaoh's inevitable demise; a few traps was nothing in comparison to the future battle he had planned.

But opening a particularly well-buried door to come face to face with intense red eyes and the blade of a knife was the icing on the proverbial cake.

He'd seen the Pharaoh pass through the mental world from time to time to retire after a long day, or Fragments of the man himself perhaps representing lost memories, or an unconscious fracture from the whole of his mind. None of the latter paid him any mind or even noticed his presence, and the Fragment reasoned it was because they were little more than wisps of thought and memory, incapable of recognition of their surroundings.

This was not either of those.

The Bakura-Fragment jumped backward, the blade of a knife slashing a deep gash across his cheek, spraying fresh blood across the stone floor. The young man holding it "resembled" the Pharaoh, or the form he took through his host, but only physically. His eyes were such a pulsating scarlet, they almost seemed to 'bleed' color, and the wordless sneer on his face did nothing to balance that.  
Charming, perhaps they could be friends.

It was a reflection of madness. A persona buried deep within his enemy's mind, likely a leftover from his millennia of incarceration.

Whatever it was, the Fragment was drawn to it, to the crusty dark stains tainting the figure's school uniform and emitting the sharp odor of iron. What a pleasant look for the Pharaoh.  
He grinned hungrily and slid his own switchblade from his pocket. This was going to be fun.

The fight was a dance of sorts, it could be described, if only in the loosest of terms. Or the participants would think so in order to justify what could generously be called a dirty scrap. To anyone else, the rolling and rough tumbling would be more akin to a vicious dogfight than any more eloquent description, rolling and kicking with no respect towards boundaries or notion of fair play and each bearing a knife at the ready. Ancient spirits fought especially dirty, and in truth, the Fragment would not have it any other way. There was no words, no essence of honor, only untamed fury and raw action.

The Fragment contained the memories of his original, but the spirit of the Ring was not one who usually engaged in physical combat, not when the forces of darkness were at his beck and call instead. So he didn't know the ins and outs of melee fighting, but allowed instinct take over and clawed at his enemy's face as though trying to rip the skin from his cheeks without any notion of experience or tactics. And to be perfectly honest, he certainly would have, given the opportunity.

Fortunately for him, the Mad Pharaoh was really no better, running primarily off of fury and hunger like a mangy, stray dog. All whirl and bite, and no defined style, his bloodstained knife impacting into the ground several times with an echoing clang as the Bakura-Fragment deflected it back away from his face again and again.

But then he reasoned, their relative skill levels were far from the point. He wasn't usually interested in foolish fisticuffs anyway, a talent better suited to Yugi's lowborn friends (loudmouth and busybody both, and the annoyance they gave him), whatever they wanted to think. No, what was so delicious and enjoyable about this fight was the insanity in the eyes of the one he dedicated himself to destroying; scarlet glowing in dim light never seemed to fade. If he could just pin the Pharaoh down and stare into those twisted eyes, maybe he'd see the reflection of his millennia of desolation, an appetizer to the all too perfect vengeance that he'd be meting out in the near future.

It didn't take very long for his opportunity to be presented to him.

The Fragment smashed his opponent's hand down on the brick floor at just the right time, knocking the knife from his hands and leaving him open for the white-haired intruder to force him to the ground.

The stench of dried blood washed over them, though it was unknown whether it was from the gash on the thief's cheek, or the darkened stains discoloring the mass of the Pharaoh's tattered school uniform. And the mad one laughed in his face, so taken by the emotions that consumed him so long ago that the notion of being trapped and practically helpless was no real consequence to him. He laughed even as the Fragment pinned and beat him down, and sank his teeth down into his shoulder enough to taste the long-forgotten echoes of fear and loneliness and despair that turned this forgotten piece of the Pharaoh into what he was now. The white-haired man could not imagine a more satisfying taste; his switchblade was balanced on the Pharaoh's chest in a white-knuckled grip as the sensation faded.

In the waking world, the conscious Pharaoh would not know what had transpired in his mindscape, except perhaps as a vaguely remembered nightmare that faded into the day.

But the thief would savor the hunt the prey. The night was all his.


End file.
